duryodana.com

With the evidence of the enemy within so clearly presented in the forthcoming Salomé performance, Spencer immediately wanted to reveal it in print. But being bound by decency and the limits of language, he was unable to write as explicitly as was required to convey the sheer horror he saw in these members of the cult of Wilde. The word lesbian was still for the most part limited to textbooks on sexuality, and he could not call Maud Allan a sodomite (even if the phrase had on rare occasions been applied to female homosexuality when, as in this case, the right words couldn’t be found in patriarchy’s dictionary).

While Oscar Wilde’s love may have been the kind that dare not speak its name, lesbianism was the love that wasn’t even allowed to have a name. Spencer telephoned a village doctor and was given the term clitoris and told that it was “a superficial organ that, when unduly excited or overdeveloped, possessed the most dreadful influence on any woman, that she would do the most extraordinary things.” Spencer duly used the word, and in the 16 February issue of Vigelante the bold headline of The Cult of the Clitoris was followed by a brief statement: To be a member of Maud Allan’s private performances in Oscar Wilde’s Salome one has to apply to a Miss Valetta… If Scotland Yard were to seize the list of these members I have no doubt they would secure the names of several of the first 47,000.

Source: http://torturebyroses.gydja.com/Sebastian-Salome.pdf

This is from a British right-wing propelled controversy in 1918 involving, in part, an Oscar Wilde play, “Salome”, “The Cult of the Clitoris” (<snicker>) and the Canadian born actress Maud Allan that played Salome and whose audience was supposedly, in general, made up of sexual deviants…

Spencer used the term Clitoris in his article as another way of identifying deviants… since only said deviants would even know what a clitoris was… HA!!

Allan was eventually brought to court AND lost.

She was accused of practicing many of the sexually charged acts depicted (or implied) in Wilde’s writings herself, including necrophilia. (from Wikipedia article on Allan)

I was asked over the weekend about what happened to me to make me take my stand against religion…

they had assumed I was abused; mentally, physically or sexually… by the church or parents in the name of a church… or that I had witnessed something like that done to someone I cared about or something…

let me make one thing perfectly clear… that is not the case… I led a fairly mundane and non-eventful existence in my church…

I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school all the way to graduation… even the University I attended, while public at the time had it’s roots in the Catholic church, with a church nearly on campus and a chaplaincy on campus…

when I was 11 and 12 I was an alterboy and for a time I had a little shrine on a sideboard in my room that acted almost as a private alter to Mary and Jesus Christ…

I have many fond memories of several priests, nuns and Catholic Brothers that I came in contact with over the period of my schooling and church going… and no real bad memories of any…

However, my beliefs started to change at around 13… when I was Confirmed I asked to not go through with it… I was doubting the church, Christianity and religion in general… but I really wasn’t able to articulate to my mother exactly what I was thinking, which in the end was probably a good thing cause it allowed me to continue searching on my own…

there was no catastrophic event that made me start feeling that way… except maybe puberty… or as I call the series of events, “growing up”…

frankly, it was just plain reason…

I had started reading voraciously when I was around 10 or 11, admittedly fantasy and sci-fi… but that was enough… a world of opposing ideas were being presented to me and I started to see the validity in them all… and by eventual and ultimate extension, their utter bankruptcy…

if there was one single cause that started me on the path that lead me to where I am today it would have to be the utter hypocrisy that I witnessed around me while growing up… my home town was 99% christian and filled to brimming with mean-spirited hypocrites and opportunists… if those were Christians I wanted no part of Christianity…

my disillusionment with religion started with a disillusionment with Christianity and bloomed from there…

and now, here I am…

far be it from me to be giving orders, but if atheists and agnostics WERE abused and that’s what made them believe as they do… they really should deny the abuse…

and no, that’s not at all what I did above… I spoke the complete truth…

but THEY should deny it because it gives believers the ability to completely disregard their existence…

a believer will simply say to themselves, “Poor soul, god will understand their torment and forgive them” and then simply disregard their entire existence from that point on… reasonable arguments or no…

I can certainly sympathise with someone that was abused and hope they can see justice done, but if they pursue justice then keep silent on their now non-faith… or if they wish to promote atheism or agnosticism or non-theistic Buddhism… then keep silent on the abuse. it would do no good to either battle, and in fact likely do all kinds of harm to their ultimate goal.

abuse or devastating events such as personal tragedy (accidents, death, bankruptcy, etc) or global catastrophes may indeed be one of the major causes of atheism, I don’t know nor care, but it is NOT an argument…

frankly if it was the catalyst then it’s childish and peevish… if it DOES open the eyes to valid reasoning afterwards, great… but keep the initial spark to yourselves… it does no service to the non-theist debate.

Iraq negotiates FMS deal for assault rifles The US Defense Security Co-operation Agency (DSCA) is in talks with the Iraqi government to kickstart a substantial Foreign Military Sale deal, worth up to USD500 million, for the supply of assault rifles. Defence sources have told Jane’s that the DSCA is negotiating a deal for around 30,000 5.56 mm M16 and M4 assault rifles with Colt Defense on behalf of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence to replace its existing armoury, made up primarily of 7.62 mm AK-47 rifles.

Source: Jane’s Land Forces News Briefs – 5 April 2007

no fucking bias or political scum-duggery going on in Iraq, eh?

sheesh…

Weblogs ‘need content warnings’ Tim O’Reilly The code of conduct was drawn up by Tim O’Reilly Readers should be warned when they are reading blogs that may contain “crude language”, a draft blogging code of conduct has suggested

Source: BBC – Weblogs ‘need content warnings’

I’ve used the PICS system on various incarnations of my websites for years…

not self-censoring, but nothing wrong with providing a system so other people can self-censor…

hey… I don’t read Fox News or Bill O’Reilly, do I?

so why not allow people to block a site, from their kids or even themselves, that uses the word ‘fuck’ more than just a tad bit liberally… no pun intended… ;-)

frankly, I see no problem mandating that every website contain just such a header that PICS provides…

however, open discussion boards and public blogs, even moderated blogs, can’t predict what every person can or will say… maybe boards and public blogs should contain warnings that anything and everything may appear at some point…

I dunno… but making a moderator or owner of such sites responsible for the words and actions of others is entirely the wrong thing to do and wrong message to send…

would a house owner be held responsible for the graffiti scrawled on the side of their house? or a library for someone scrawling something objectionable in a library book?

that may not be the most apt analogy, but it is probably the best real world example there is…

you can’t compare a public blog or board to a newspaper… it can’t be held to the same content standards or legislation…

this is more than just about free speech, it is also about individual responsibility and not having others take ANY of that responsibility on themselves…

Frankly, I think this is just a ploy of O’Reilly to get his hands into something that up until now has been uncontrollable by big corporations… much, I’m sure, to their teeth gnashing chagrin…

it’s actually kind of insidious…

many believers use this one:

“I don’t care how people worship, because they are simply worshipping god in their own way.”

now, here’s what this statement really means:

“I don’t care how people worship, because they are simply worshipping MY god in their own way.”

the people who say this grudgingly accept the existence of other religions by simply asserting to themselves that while they maybe have it all wrong in practice and in image of god, it’s simply an error of methodology… they’re worshipping my god by another method…

that is a delicious example of spiritual colonialism… negating the value of another religion by co-opting its end-point.

when I was recently tossed this tidbit of spiritual hypocrisy I decided to spin the table…

I told them what their statement really meant… which they denied of course… so I went and found a picture of Kali in one of her more nasty incarnations and showed them…

then said, “this is god to millions of Indians”… if you are not asserting by your statement that these people are worshipping your god, then it is just as valid to say that you are worshipping their god. So, could you please look at this picture of Kali and pray to her right now.”

of course they couldn’t… and so their initial statement and defence of it was completely bankrupt…

as long as they can maintain in their minds that others are worshipping, in another fashion, their always angry white bearded bush burning incest prompting Yahweh, then it’s ok…

but they cannot equally accept that they may be worshipping Kali… just in another fashion…

the statement is insidious and dishonest and should never be accepted without comment…